Spells for Forgetting

by Adrienne Young

I wanted to hate my mother in that moment, as I felt the deep grow shallower, the island creeping closer. I wanted to be angry or think her selfish for sending me back here. But I owed her this. After everything, the very least I owed her was this. A few days, and then I was gone. I could turn my back on the island like I had fourteen years ago. But this time, I would never go back.

I’d lived enough years now to know that there were some ghosts that haunted you forever. Saoirse had secrets, yes. But so did we.

In another moment, it began to clear, and I realized my fingernails were biting into my palm. The pointed leaves of the maple trees along Main Street shook on their branches, every one of them painted the color of blood. Nearly six weeks late, and with no warning at all, every tree on Saoirse had turned in a single night. I knew better than to dismiss such things. We all did. It was the time of year when the veil between worlds was thin, and in that moment, I could feel the tingle of the Otherworld tiptoeing lightly up my spine.

Witches. I’d heard children from the mainland whisper the word like a secret from the time I was little, playing in my mother’s shop as she worked. I’d always thought that strange, because on Saoirse, the word wasn’t a secret. It was deep magic that ran through the blood of every woman on the island. It seeped into the earth of the orchard, its leaves unfurling every spring, falling to rot every autumn before turning back into the ground.

I rubbed both hands over my face, pinching my eyes closed until the sound of his footsteps faded away. When I opened them again, my gaze went to the window that faced the Blackwoods’ house across the road. I could barely make out the yellow paint on the cottage through the trees. In my mind, I could still see the image of Emery standing there in the drive. I don’t really remember when things changed between us. Emery, Dutch, Lily, and I had grown up in a kind of separate world on the island. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Emery in a way that I was both too young and too naïve for. I could see that now. But the tangled roots of it were still buried deep beneath the surface of me, and that pain I felt when I saw her standing across the road was still there. It had always been there.

My parents had been right. If I’d known where August had gone, I would have followed. But now the truth was finally sinking in—that he hadn’t just left the island. I may not have known how to find him, but he’d known where I was. He’d always known. August wasn’t lost. He wasn’t taken away or waiting for me somewhere. He never came back. He had never come back for me.

“I’ll love you forever,” she whispered. “I swear it.”

I’d been in love with August Salt since before I knew what the words meant. I don’t know when it happened—the narrow space between seconds, when a spark like the birth of a hundred stars found a home in my blood. Since then, every day had been colored with the glittering light of it dragging me in its wake, pulling me beneath its surface. And I didn’t care. If this was what it was like to drown, then for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to take another sip of air.